


First Date

by ClaraxBarton



Series: Thank you fics [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Relationship, First Date, Hawkeye - Freeform, M/M, best bro Natasha Romanoff, recovering Bucky Barnes, winter soldier - Freeform, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 18:46:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: Bucky has a date for the first time in a very long time.





	First Date

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madrefiero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madrefiero/gifts).

> For Madrefiero

It wasn’t like Bucky was inexperienced. Because he wasn’t. He was, if Steve’s smirking recollections and the history books and the fragments of his own memories were to be believed, _ very _ experienced.

But that didn’t change the fact that all of his experience was a century out of date and that the man who had been, according to one painful History Channel documentary, the Golden Boy of Brooklyn, had been ground to literal dust by literal Nazis.

That apparently didn’t matter to Steve, or to Natasha, or to Sam. The three of them seemed to have come up with a _ plan _ for getting Bucky ‘back out there’ as Sam had put it. It wasn’t enough, Steve maintained, that Bucky was now deemed more or less fit to mingle with civilians without the rest of the Avengers - read Tony because he was apparently the only one with any common sense anymore - on standby to prevent a disaster. Living his life alone wasn’t what he wanted, Natasha pointed out after Bucky looked at maybe a few too many attractive men and women maybe too longingly in the boxing club/crossfit gym they had started going to a few weeks ago. For a white boy he was, Sam insisted, too hot to be single. Even with all of his baggage. 

Eventually, under their combined onslaught, Bucky folded. And Natasha set him up on a blind date and told him to act natural and Steve complimented his choice of leather jacket and Sam told him to _ get some _.

So, when Clint Barton, of all people, sat down across from Bucky at the diner and grinned at him, Bucky didn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” Clint said, as if Bucky’s confused glare wasn’t the kind of expression that made literal Nazis literally piss themselves.

“I have a date,” Bucky said, instead of returning the greeting. He looked around, wondering if maybe this was some kind of… test? Maybe a joke? Maybe - 

“I know. Nat threatened to castrate me if I wasn’t on time and presentable for it,” Clint was still grinning.

“For my date,” Bucky had to clarify. Did Natasha think Bucky needed a babysitter? Backup? Some assurance that he wouldn’t fuck this up or kill someone or - 

“Yeah. Your date with _ me _,” Clint’s grin was starting to slip.

Bucky’s brain was brought to a screeching halt and he focused fully on Clint.

On Clint, who was wearing a black button up shirt, the sleeves shoved up his forearms and the hint of a bandage visible under the collar where he had left the top two buttons open. On Clint, whose fingers were still taped from their last mission and had a fading bruise around his left eye from the last time he and Bucky had sparred and Clint had gotten distracted. On Clint, who had shaved sometime between their morning workout and now and whose sharp jaw was unfairly on full display. On Clint, who was unmistakeably wearing cologne, some hint of citrus and pepper that was faint but sharp and _ good _.

“That… are you sure?” Bucky had to ask, because he _ knew _ what a blind date was even without Tony’s condescending but - not that Bucky would ever admit it - informational powerpoint presentation, and a blind date with his teammate, with his friend, with the one person who never flinched away from the horror of what had been done to Bucky or tried to insist that it wasn’t his fault or that he would be okay or that he would remember everything or that things would ever be anything like normal again - that _ wasn’t _ a blind date. And it wasn’t… it wasn’t a good idea. At all.

“I mean, I can show you the chain of threatening text messages from Nat?” Clint offered and wiggled until he could pull his phone out of black jeans that Bucky could now see were practically painted onto his long, lean legs.

“No,” Bucky insisted and waved the phone away. Clint’s expression fell even more. “I don’t need to see the messages,” Bucky added, feeling a twinge of guilt which was awful, because that was the one thing he _ never _ felt around Clint. Not even when he punched him too hard during their sparring sessions because honestly, trying to distract Bucky by tickling him was Clint’s own damn fault and Clint was the only person who _ got it _, got Bucky on a level that meant he didn’t have to apologize or run away.

Clint nodded, set the phone down on the table between them, and stared at the laminated menu in front of him.

“I, uh, I can go? If you want me to?” Clint offered, not looking up from the menu. His cheeks were pink, and Bucky realized that Clint’s _hair_ _had gel in it_. Clint, who looked like he had just tripped out of bed every moment of every day, had made the effort to tame his hair.

“No,” Bucky said again.

Clint’s clear blue gaze crept up.

“No?” He echoed.

“I don’t want you to go,” Bucky said.

Clint’s lips twitched, not quite reforming into the carefree grin that he usually favored Bucky with, the one that made Bucky think that even if things were never okay again, even if Bucky was never going to be the Golden Boy of Brooklyn again or even remember him, that this future wasn’t such a bad place to find himself in. But it wasn’t that far off, either.

“Cool,” Clint said and he straightened up in his seat and stabbed a finger at the menu, “because I’m fucking starving and it’s been forever since I had some decent perogies and this place is supposed to be awesome.”

“Never heard of it before Natasha told me to be here at seven,” Bucky admitted. And he had been nervous enough - about literally everything else - that he had only taken the time to memorize the route and hadn’t actually invested the diner itself.

Clint nodded.

“Used to come here a lot, before, you know, all the shit. Haven’t been here in a few years but I figured you’d like it?”

Clint was back to looking unsure, looking hesitant in a way that Clint Barton, that _ Hawkeye _ never was.

Bucky blinked.

“You picked this place out.”

“Well, yeah? I was the one who wanted to take you out and -”

“Natasha didn’t coerce you into this.”

“Coerce? Buck, you think I was _ forced to go on a date with you _?”

“Why else - why else would you be here?” It hurt, a lot more than Bucky thought it would, to put those words out there, to admit that there really wasn’t anything anyone could or should or _ would _ expect from him, from a date with him.

“Um, because I’ve been in love with you since maybe the moment Nat told me about you shooting through her to kill that scientist in Iran.”

“I shot _ through her _,” Bucky reminded Clint.

Clint nodded.

“Yeah, and then you slapped a pressure bandage on her and called some LEOs to pick her up before she bled out. That - you made a fucking amazing shot and you kept my best friend alive even when there was no reason for you to do it. Those two things _ alone _ are like, enough to have me worshipping you for forever. But then you’re all -” Clint waved his hand at Bucky. “So, yeah, I mean, no, Nat absolutely did not coerce me into this even a _ little _ bit. Well, the hair shit - that was her. But like, it’s not that I didn’t want to look good for you? I just - you know, suck at this and -”

“You smell really nice,” Bucky said, to cut off Clint’s descent into self-deprecation.

Now the grin was back, bright and warm and making Bucky’s chest feel simultaneously tight and free at the same time.

“I -thanks. You, uh. You’re perfect.”

Bucky picked up his menu.

“Perogies, huh? There’s this place in Budapest that made them filled with cream cheese and -”

“And bacon?” Clint was already nodding. “God, yeah. Nat and I went there, we had this mission and - well, the mission was shit from the go but those perogies. God, I _ dream _ about those perogies.”

“You want to split an order?” Bucky suggested.

“Split? With _ you _, Mr. I just want a bite of your brownie I’m not going to eat the whole thing oh hey it’s all gone weird?”

“That’s rich, coming from _ you _, Mr. Let’s share a pizza and oh no by share I meant you can fight with the dog for a single left over slice.”

“To be fair… it was pizza,” Clint pointed out.

“That is fair,” Bucky agreed.

They grinned at each other over the menus.

“I’m glad you wanted to go out with me,” Bucky said.

“Yeah?”

Bucky nodded.

“Good. Same. I mean - yeah.”

For his first date in nearly eighty years, Bucky felt like this wasn’t going all that badly.

-o-

  



End file.
